Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Negative Newsweek Story

Newsweek has run a piece titled "A Climate Cure's Dark Side." As the name implies, the article is unkind toward geoengineering, reporting that stratospheric aerosol injections threaten Asian monsoons, marine cloud whitening threatens the Amazon, and geoengineering cannot cool the Arctic. The story is essentially a preview of the next issue of Atmospheric Science Letters, evidently focused on geoengineering.

These upcoming articles must be considered objectively on their own merits, and should not be prejudged. However, the Newsweek story appears to be the product of a discussion restricted to its author and contributors to the upcoming geoengineering issue, an issue which seems to come down firmly on the side of geoengineering skeptics. It will be interesting to read these articles, and it will also be interesting to learn more about their origins.